SACW | April 22-24, 2007 | Sri Lanka: Human rights / Pakistan: Taking on the Jihadis / India: Needed more reason, Not more religion; Attacks on media and on inter religious marriages / UK: integration or segregation

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire  | April 22-24, 2007 | Dispatch No. 2393 - Year 9

[1] Sri Lanka: Holding a long spoon when supping with the devil 
(Kishali Pinto Jayawardena)
[2] Pakistan: Resisting the Fundamentalists in Pakistan
   (i) Understanding the jihadi mindset (Tariq Rahman)
  (ii) Extremism of the few and dereliction of the state (Editorial, 
Daily Times, April 21, 2007)
  (iii) Who will fight this Talibanisation? (Editorial, The News, 
March 30, 2007)
  (iv) Request for assistance to a person who challenged a suicide 
bomber (Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy)
[3] India needs a new altar of reason, not more religion (Jawed Naqvi)
[4] India: Media attacks reek of complicity by the state (Teesta Setalvad)
[5] India: Don't alienate Muslims (Ratna Kapur)
[6] India: Civil Code, De Facto (Saba Naqvi Bhaumik)
[7] UK: Integration - or segregation? (Terry Sanderson)


____


[1]

Sunday Times
April 22, 2007

April 22, 2007

HOLDING A LONG SPOON WHEN SUPPING WITH THE DEVIL
by Kishali Pinto Jayawardena

Let me start this week's column by articulating one profound truth; 
indisputably the megalomaniac in tiger stripes in the north is a 
terrorist, not a liberation fighter nor your genuine revolutionary. 
His one time brother in arms is also a terrorist, even though he has 
now painted himself with democratic stripes. The long spoon that the 
government should have held when supping with the devil has proved to 
be lamentably illusionary; ordinary Tamils whether they be academics 
(should we presume by now that Professor Raveendranath, the former 
Vice Chancellor of the Eastern University, an honourable, respected 
and gentle man who was unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at 
the wrong time, is no more?), businessmen, journalists have been 
abducted, some to return after pressure was exerted or money raised 
but others to remain in that piteous, uncertain vale of the 
'disappeared.'

But let me now proceed, to yet another unavoidable truth; the 
grievous wrongs committed by non-state actors, as heinously 
condemnatory as they are, pales into relative insignificance when the 
nature of the Sri Lankan State is examined. It is often said by the 
hawks that the Government should put itself in a position of strength 
when dealing with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, by which it 
is meant a position of military strength by capturing rebel held 
tracts of land. I beg to differ however. To my mind, military 
victories over patches of dry earth enlivened only by the blood of 
countless of soldiers from Sri Lanka's rural heartlands who have died 
on its surface (and whose sacrifices may well be in vain as we have 
seen in the constant deadly dance in the North/East where militarily 
captured areas have been reclaimed either through political 
capitulation or by insidious infiltration), speaks only the 
antagonistic language of one adversary to another.

Instead, the true position of strength that the Government should 
speak from, should be the language of justice and rights, illustrated 
by a precise demonstration, point by point, as to the manner in which 
it is different from its terrorist adversaries. It may be contended 
that this is mere naivete; that a Government fighting a ruthless 
separatist movement cannot afford to indulge in any such luxuries. 
But, this is exactly the kind of naivete by which great thinkers of 
our times accomplished what was thought to be impossible, whether it 
was a Gandhi fighting against imperialist might or a Mandela 
overthrowing an apartheid regime. In the absence of this articulation 
of justice by the Sri Lankan State, Sinhalese and Muslims as well as 
Tamils stand to lose.

For make no mistake about this fact; the barbaric thrust of the State 
has been experienced against the majority Sinhalese as well as the 
minorities; the forty thousand disappeared in the South during the 
eighties and early nineties will bear grim testimony to this 
assertion. Then again, the constant brutality practiced by police 
officers in situations of ordinary law and order whether in relation 
to petty offenders or persons mistaken of being criminals is another 
manifestation. Today it is your Tamil neighbour, tomorrow it may well 
be yourself; the classic warning not to ask for whom the bell tolls 
as it may be for you, is a living reality in Sri Lanka today.

But what do I mean by demonstrating a commitment to rights? Put 
practically and basically, it is to eschew government intimidation 
which is now apparent to the extent that the Secretary of the Defence 
Ministry and the brother of the incumbent President has felt himself 
emboldened enough this week to verbally threaten the editor of the 
Daily Mirror and warn her of consequences by militant forces which, 
as reportedly affirmed by him, he may be powerless to prevent.

On another level, it means to abstain from deliberately fostering an 
atmosphere of terror through the implementation of emergency 
regulations whereby arrests are made, not by identifiable state 
agents adhering to the requirements of lawful arrests but anonymously.
On yet a further level, it means demonstrating wholesale respect for 
constitutional institutions and processes; in this regard, the most 
imperative need would be restoring the practical functioning of the 
17th Amendment to the Constitution, bringing back the Constitutional 
Council (CC) and re-constituting the so called independent 
commissions through new appointments of its members with the 
concurrence of the CC. It means making sure that the legal and 
prosecutorial system actually works in regard to identifying and 
punishing perpetrators of enforced disappearances and other grave 
human rights violations, rather than putting forward fact finding 
commissions of inquiry. If the Sri Lankan State captures this true 
position of strength, it can capture the minds and hearts of its 
people, thus relegating the coercion of terrorists to the obscurity 
to which it belongs.

Assuredly, the short term gains that abuse of the rule of law and the 
Constitution might bring to the political establishment is 
comprehensively cancelled by the long term detriment that is caused 
not only to the political regime but indeed, to entire societal, 
political and legal structures. The short lived administration of 
Ranasinghe Premadasa is proof enough, surely, of this fact.

In each instance, it is precisely the failure to implement the rule 
of law on the part of authorities, political, administrative and 
legal, that leads to defensive action. For example, Sri Lankans 
started using the individual communications procedures before the 
United Nations Human Rights Committee in terms of the Protocol 
(acceded to as way back as in 1997) to the International Covenant on 
Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), only at a point when there was 
considerable public disenchantment with the judicial process. 
Similarly, the failure to ensure effective investigations and 
prosecutions of human rights abuses has now led to the call for 
international human rights monitoring.

Recourse to international mechanisms, support or monitoring is not 
the panacea for all the ills that beset this country. Instead, they 
should be used only to the extent that they compel exposure and 
revision of the domestic order. In the ultimate analysis, all the 
monitoring in the world will not help us if we cannot work our 
democratic system to its optimum and demand accountability from our 
rulers. Nepal exemplifies this lesson. It is time that Sri Lanka 
learnt from its example.

_____


[2]   [Resisting the Fundamentalists in Pakistan]

(i)

Dawn
April 10, 2007

UNDERSTANDING THE JIHADI MINDSET

by Dr Tariq Rahman

RECENTLY two incidents have sent shockwaves among ordinary Pakistanis 
as well as western observers. In the first one, militants, using the 
name of Islam, burst into a school in Tank and tried to persuade 
students to go with them for jihad. The principal of the school 
resisted only to be abducted from his house and released, after being 
traumatised in the process, two days later.

In the second, women students of the Jamia Hafsa, a madressah in 
Islamabad, tried to close down video and audio shops and then, in a 
mood of defiant vigilante militancy, kidnapped three women on charges 
of running a brothel. Now, they have set up a court to legitimise 
vigilante action.

We keep hearing, with deepening dismay, of bombings, suicide bombings 
and fighting in the name of Islam by militants who are called by 
various names including 'jihadis'. But what is a jihadi? How does he 
(or she) think? What circumstances or ideas create the jihadi 
mindset? These are questions which bother most of us.

Psychologist Sohail Abbas has provided answers to them in a book 
entitled 'Probing the Jihadi Mindset' (2007). The book has been 
published by the National Book Foundation and is easy to read. 
Although it is a survey, the answers are accessible to the ordinary 
reader with no specialised training. The survey is based on 517 
jihadis divided into the Peshawar group (198 people) and the Haripur 
group (319 people). Both groups comprise men ranging between the ages 
of 17 and 72 years. These men went to Afghanistan to fight against 
the Americans after 9/11.

In the Peshawar sample, however, some were already present in 
Afghanistan. The defining feature common to both groups is that they 
believed and participated, or wanted to contribute to, in what they 
believed was a jihad against foreign, non-Muslim, aggressors.

Most jihadis (74.1 per cent) were below 30 years of age and many were 
from Punjab. The majority came from Pashto-speaking backgrounds (48 
per cent) while the percentage of Pashto-speakers in the population 
of Pakistan is only 15.4. This implies that the Pashtuns have been 
affected most by religious fervour.

However, in this case they may have joined the war because the 
Taliban, who are Pashtuns, were under attack. Urdu-speaking Mohajirs, 
whose share in the population is only 7.6 per cent, contributed 10.6 
per cent of jihadis. This means that, despite the ethnic appeal of 
the MQM, the urban areas of Sindh are still prone to potential 
religious violence.

The jihadis were not completely uneducated. Whereas the illiterate 
population of Pakistan is 45.19 per cent, among the jihadis 44.3 per 
cent were illiterate. In the Haripur sample, however, only 23.2 per 
cent were illiterate.

Even more interesting is the fact that, contrary to common 
perception, most jihadis had not been educated in madressahs. While 
35.5 per cent did attend madressahs they stayed there mostly less 
than six months (indeed merely 14 per cent stayed beyond that 
period). In the Haripur sample, 54.5 per cent had received no 
religious education while 45.5 per cent had - but again, even those 
who did receive religious education received very little of it. In 
short, as Dr Sohail Abbas concludes: 'They were recruited largely 
from the mainstream of the Pakistan population. Their literacy level 
is above the average of the general population'.

This, indeed, is what reports on 9/11 tell us. Those who join radical 
Islamic groups are predominantly educated in technology and science. 
They do not necessarily belong to madressahs though, considering that 
the proportion of these religious seminaries to state educational 
institutions is so small, there is a proportionately large number of 
madressah students in radical Islamic circles in Pakistan.

According to the survey, 48.5 per cent of jihadis said that their 
families were more religious than those around them. However, they 
were not motivated for jihad by the family. In most cases (59.6 per 
cent in Haripur and 39.7 in Peshawar), they were motivated by 
religious leaders.

The peer group also had a strong influence and, of course, there was 
self-motivation. Indeed, not surprisingly, the jihadis saw themselves 
as the most religious member of the family. Some tried to change the 
family's religious orientation stopping others from going to the 
tombs of saints because they believed it was forbidden.

Another interesting aspect of the jihadis' attitude towards their 
families is that they did not bother about hurting or worrying their 
families. Nor, in the case of married men, did they think as to who 
would look after them. In short, ideology was so strong in their 
minds so as to break family bonds which are otherwise powerful in 
Pakistan.

These people also appeared to be less sociable than other Pakistanis. 
About 49 per cent reported limited social contacts. Maybe, in the 
absence of places for socialisation, the mosque filled in that gap in 
their lives. In any case, according to the survey, they were more 
emotionally unstable (29 per cent) than ordinary men (only nine per 
cent). Villagers, it appears, are more stable than the inhabitants of 
urban slums possibly because the villages are still rooted in a 
strong kinship network and tradition. In the city one is living in a 
void and feels rootless.

Most jihadis (65.5 per cent) were not sure that Osama bin Laden was 
involved in 9/11 but were sure that the Americans attacked 
Afghanistan because they wanted to destroy Islam (79.3 per cent) and 
that Islam was in danger (69 per cent). They wanted the glory of 
Islam from jihad (73.7 per cent) and many (39.4 per cent) also wanted 
to harm the Americans in the process. They had strong views and, in 
most cases, these remained unchanged although they were jailed in the 
end.

The book contains eight stories based on the lives of jihadis whose 
names have been changed to hide their real identities. These make for 
touching as well as harrowing reading. Basically, these are confused 
men without much knowledge of international or national events. They 
live lives of appalling misery and deprivation. Religion and, or the 
opinion of significant others, give value and meaning to their lives.

Jihadis lack entertainment and are fed by prejudices by their school 
textbooks, TV, radio and friends. Then, at some stage in life, they 
are persuaded to join the jihad by a religious figure, friend or 
relative. This gives them fresh enthusiasm and a new meaning in life. 
Instead of being treated like the scum of the earth the way poor 
people are treated in Pakistan, they are treated like heroes - even 
if it is temporarily.

Moreover, they are convinced that, whether they live or die, lose or 
win, they will have an exalted other-worldly reward as well as high 
reputation in their reference group in this world. Thus they risk 
everything to join jihadi movements. The survey contains much more 
which is of interest to those who want to understand Islamic 
extremism and militancy in Pakistan.

Perhaps the risk-taking attitude of the Jamia Hafsa students as well 
as the militant aggression of the Pakistani Taliban will become clear 
if we use these insights to study them. This survey needs wider 
dissemination and serious study by all concerned citizens who value 
tolerance, peace and democracy in Pakistan.

But what are we to do now that vigilante groups have started 
operating in the name of Islamisation even in Islamabad? In my 
opinion, the press and civil society must protest in clear terms that 
nobody can take the law into their own hands. The government, which 
cracks down on protests of other kinds, must impose the law on these 
vigilante groups too.

However, for doing so the government must have the moral legitimacy 
which comes out of fairness and strict adherence to the law itself. 
It is obvious to citizens that the law is bent and the judiciary 
insulted whenever it suits the rulers. For a long time the officials 
of the state - military, intelligence agencies, police and civilian 
bureaucracy - have been thrashing up ordinary citizens whenever they 
have annoyed them. Is this the way for creating respect for the law?

If evenly and fairly applied, the law is there to protect everybody 
including madressah students. For it is among them that people are 
picked up and sent to unknown and illegal prisons; it is for people 
of their kind that the Guatanamo Bay kind of horror holes are made.

The humanitarians of the world have a big struggle ahead of them - 
the struggle to re-establish the rule of law, habeas corpus, 
civilised values of tolerance and peace and democratic freedom with 
full freedom to minorities and dissidents for all. In this struggle, 
besides a strong and fair government, only a good educational system 
teaching humanitarian values can help.

o o o

(ii)

Editorial, Daily Times, April 21, 2007

EXTREMISM OF THE FEW AND DERELICTION OF THE STATE

Citizens of Pakistan rallied on Thursday against religious extremism 
in general and the blackmailing clerics of Lal Masjid in particular. 
Citizens' rights activists organised simultaneous protests in Lahore, 
Islamabad, Karachi and Peshawar to denounce the campaign of 
vigilantism and intimidation unleashed by the clerics in the heart of 
Islamabad. The rallies were taken out against the criminal action 
taken by scores of boys and girls from the seminaries of Hafsa 
(girls) and Fareedia (men) run by the clerics of Lal Masjid in 
Islamabad. Armed students went into the house of one Shamim Akhtar 
and bound her and her daughter and daughter-in-law in ropes and 
dragged them to the seminary where they were kept for three days 
while the government in Islamabad wrung its hands and didn't take any 
action. The statement of the wronged family is still on the BBC 
website in which the seminarians also denounce the abducted family as 
"sinful Shias".

The government has also made "deals" with the two clerics on the 
question of illegally occupied real estate. The negotiations were 
discussed by both sides on the Voice of America in which the 
government seemed to be offering, not a legal remedy, but a further 
surrender of state land that will serve only to enhance the power of 
the two clerics who seem bent upon taking over the functions of all 
the branches of the state: the police, the judiciary and the 
legislature. The clerics told the world on VOA that they would 
perform all the functions of the state because they knew the right 
way, and denounced the government and the democratic system which 
they said was "un-Islamic".

The Lahore march was organised by the Women's Action Forum (WAF) in 
collaboration with other non-governmental organisations to register 
the first-ever citizens' protest against religious extremism. They 
were joined by minority groups, political workers, lawyers, trade 
unionists, journalists and students, as well as contingents of the 
PPP and PMLN women's wing, as they marched to the Lahore High Court 
and the Punjab Assembly building on the Mall. The slogans raised 
condemned clerical blackmail and intimidation and were supported 
significantly by the Hall Road traders with banners reading: "Stop 
blackmailing and exploiting traders in the name of Islam," and "We 
condemn mullahs' operation against CD shops".

This happened in a city which was put to the torch by extremist 
clerical movements last year. Businesses that have suffered because 
of agitation by organised gangs (considered Islamic forces by the 
government) are now willing to support those elements in society who 
shun violence and support rule of law and wish the country to make 
economic progress. Mercifully, the City District Government of 
Lahore, harassed by elements it thought well of in the past, relaxed 
its Section 144 law to allow the rally in the midst of a large police 
presence.

Understandably, the government that has shown no backbone in facing 
the Lal Masjid clerics came in for criticism by the rallies in the 
big cities: "We, the people of Pakistan, are not oblivious of this 
mullah-military alliance. There can be no democracy in Pakistan 
unless GHQ-backed mullahs stop issuing decrees to exploit people in 
the name of Islam". Another slogan went like this: "This mullah is 
defaming the most beautiful and peaceful religion in the world and 
wants to hamper the prosperity and progress of Pakistan."

The procession of protesting men and women that walked up to the 
Parliament House in Islamabad asked: "Where's the writ of the state?" 
In its demonstration of defiance of moral tyranny the rally carried 
placards saying, "No to religious extremism; yes to life and music" 
and "Free the children's library". Karachi too put up its 
demonstration of outrage at what was happening in Islamabad. 
Pakistan's largest city and economic engine has seen the worst 
clerical outrages in its history since 2000. It has seen its most 
respectable citizens done to death and its precious innocent lives 
lost to suicide-bombing.

In Peshawar, hundreds of women's rights campaigners - including some 
60 burqa-clad women from the tribal areas - staged a rally near the 
press club, denouncing threats of suicide bombings by Lal Masjid 
clerics and baton-wielding madrassa students. These citizens have 
seen the fall of the normally governed cities of the NWFP to the 
tyranny of Talibanisation.

The citizens of Pakistan have given their verdict against extremism 
and the abetting government in Islamabad which has allowed this most 
ugly and false manifestation of Islam to give Pakistan a bad name. *

o o o

(iii)
Editorial, The News, March 30, 2007

WHO WILL FIGHT THIS TALIBANISATION?

The events of recent days in the NWFP town of Tank and in Islamabad 
should shatter the assessment of all those policymakers, government 
functionaries and members of civil society who thought that 
Talibanisation was a feature only of FATA or some other remote and 
backward area of the country. Tank, which is now under curfew, and 
where several people were killed as extremists (thought to be allied 
with a Waziristan militant commander with whom the government 
brokered a 'peace deal' last year) launched an all-out attack on 
Tuesday night, is the district headquarters of Tank district and not 
far from Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan and Lakki Marwat, all reasonably 
large towns of NWFP. The violence there began on Monday after a 
school principal had the courage to call in the police after jihadis 
barged into his institution and tried to win new recruits to their 
cause. The local SHO also responded and he sadly paid for it with his 
life, reportedly killed in the most cold-blooded manner possible, 
after he thought he had managed to broker a truce with the militants 
who would leave the school peacefully and without any new schoolboys 
in tow. The principal was kidnapped the following day from his home 
and he too paid for his courage in standing up to these extremists 
with his life -- on Thursday it was reported that his body was found 
from South Waziristan. The militants who attacked Tank on Thursday 
have been linked to pro-Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud since this 
is his area of influence, although he has himself denied any such 
connection. However, it is worth reiterating that on many occasions 
in the past militants have carried out attacks against government 
installations and security personnel or killed so-called 'informers' 
in areas under their influence but then disassociated themselves from 
these acts. One can only hope that the president is absolutely one 
hundred per cent accurate when he says that those elements in the 
intelligence agencies who in the past had supported the Taliban, the 
jihadis and their sympathisers are no longer in the service of the 
government and that now any assistance to these extremists is coming, 
if at all, from retired intelligence officials.

The other disturbing development is taking place right in the heart 
of the federal capital. In this case particularly, the government and 
the Islamabad local administration are to blame for not having acted 
earlier when the female students of Jamia Hafsa had forcibly and 
illegally occupied a children's library demanding that this 
occupation would end only after the government rebuilt a portion of a 
mosque complex that had been demolished by the Capital Development 
Authority because it was built on encroached land. Now since those 
protesting claim to be religious students, one would first like to 
ask them their position on the legality of a house of worship - both 
from the temporal and the theological point of view - that is built 
on encroached land. Had the government acted promptly and strongly 
against this illegal occupation of the library and told the students 
and their madressah patrons that mosques built on illegal land are 
not legal, and had the students been ejected and not allowed to roam 
around Islamabad and launch 'raids' perhaps what happened on 
Wednesday could have been pre-empted. But as usual, the government 
seemed to sleep through this all, with the religious affairs minister 
claiming a "breakthrough" some weeks ago in the occupation stand-off.

This 'breakthrough' was that the government would rebuild the 
demolished parts of the mosque. The minister also managed to pose for 
the cameras as he laid the first 'brick' of this promised rebuilding 
operation. But the naivete of the minister and all those in the 
government who agreed to this view of giving concessions to the undue 
and illegal demands of extremists in the country was once again 
proven wrong when after being given a foot they proceeded to demand a 
mile. Hopefully, in any future negotiations, the services of the good 
minister will not be used. Instead of leaving the library and 
returning to their seminary as any God-fearing law-abiding citizens 
would have done (they in fact would not have occupied the library in 
the first place), they placed more demand before the government and 
refused to end their occupation. The initial 'raid' they conducted on 
one of the capital's busiest bazaars amazingly went unnoticed by the 
police and local administration, again making one wonder whether some 
elements in either or both organisations were perhaps sympathetic to 
the cause of these extremists. An SHO has apparently been suspended 
for failing to act against the students when they 'raided' the market 
but one would like to ask the government what it plans to do in the 
case of the minister, whose 'breakthrough' emboldened these 
extremists so much that they believed they could go about dispensing 
their own warped interpretation of religion and law on everybody 
else, holding even policemen hostage in the process.

What is perhaps equally worrying is the fact that there may be many 
in Pakistani society who may think that what these extremists posing 
as students have done is good and necessary. After all, with all the 
intolerance and bigotry that one is exposed to as a Pakistani in the 
course of one's daily life (from the mosque imam's often virulent 
sermon, the bias and prejudice manifest in the national curriculum, 
the overdose of religious programmes and channels on television, to 
the increasing tide of religiosity in society and the tendency among 
many people to bring in religion into just about everything), the 
government and civil society have themselves to blame for this 
increase in Talibanisation. As for the government, it fails on 
several counts. Foremost among them is its remarkable -- and sadly 
enduring -- inability to take a stand against extremists forces such 
as in Tank and the Jamia Hafsa students, deeming such matters 
'sensitive' and then burying its head in the sand like an ostrich, 
pretending everything is all right, and continuing to think (at least 
some sections of the government and security establishment do, it 
would be fair to assume, subscribe to this view) that a way of having 
leverage with our regional neighbours means supping with the 
extremists and jihadis. In addition to this, the government is guilty 
of adopting a clear double standard. liberal and law-abiding 
progressive elements are tear-gassed and lathi-charged when they 
organise peaceful protests but when the extremists and obscurantists 
indulge in violent protests they are given undue concessions and a 
free hand to act with impunity. Tank and the Jamia Hafsa episode 
should serve as a wakeup call to the government. It must act 
decisively now. The future is only going to get bleaker unless 
madressah and national curriculum reforms are carried out and the 
overt display of religion in national life is curtailed, to levels 
normally found in other Muslim countries such as Malaysia or the Gulf 
states. As for civil society, and those who think they are 
non-extremist (i.e., progressive, liberal and/or moderate), they 
better stand up and speak against the extremists or risk their very 
existence and way of life coming under a permanent threat.

o o o

[URGENT REQUEST FOR ASSISTANCE TO A PERSON WHO CHALLENGED A SUICIDE 
BOMBER IN PAKISTAN]

23 Apr 2007

In a nut shell his story is:

Ghufran Haider was praying at a Shia mosque in 2005 when he saw a man 
dressed in a heavy jacket enter the mosque. He immediately felt 
uneasy so he approached the man and noticed that he was looking 
rather nervous, instinct kicked in and he threw himself on the bomber 
who blew himself up severly injuring Ghufran...This young man was 
able to save the lives of over a hundred worshippers...
After several operations at the cost of his poor parents, Ghufran was 
able to recover and became a key witness in the suicide bombing case.
His testimony in court allowed the government to award the death 
penalty to the bombers accomplices. As soon as the verdict was 
announced the Sunni militant group started threatening Ghufran and 
his family and he had to flee the country...
He is very poor and has no resources, his brave act saved the lives 
of so many people and the Pakistan government failed to acknowledge 
that, in fact they offered him no protection...
He is now biding time in Dubai and his visa expires in 10 days 
time...If he returns to Pakistan he will almost certainly be killed.

Thank you
Sharmeen

Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy
www.sharmeenobaidfilms.com

[See Also a more detailed original message ]

On 4/22/07, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy <sharmeenobaid at hotmail.com> wrote:
Dear All,
I am writing to you with an urgent matter. Two year ago i did a film for
Channel 4 called "Pakistan's Double Game"
http://www.sharmeenobaidfilms.com/pakdoublegame.html

in the film i profiled a young man named Ghufran Haider, a shia who saved
the lives of hundreds of worshippers by throwing himself on a suicide bomber
in a mosque in Karachi.
He was the first Pakistani ever to stop a suicide bombing and it took a lot
of courage on his part to do so.
He was severely injured and his (poor) family had to bear the cost of his
operations.

This year, Ghufran's testimony in court led to the death penalty being
awarded to two of the suicide bomber's accompalices. Now, his family is
constantly being threatened and as usual the Pakistani government has done
nothing to help him or his family.

He managed to leave Pakistan a few days ago and is currently in Dubai on a
visitor visa which expires in 2 weeks. If he goes back to Pakistan, he will
almost certainly be killed by the Sunni militants.

He is reaching out to me for help but i dont know how i can assist him,
given that i am myself a citizen of Pakistan and not sure where he can claim
assylum.

Pakistanis in general never take risks, they seldom give testimony in court
and almost never risk their lives, so i feel compelled to help him...

If any of you have any ideas, or know of anyone he can contact who can help
him gain assylum, please please get in touch with me...This young man's life
is at stake and for those of us who are fighting againt terrorism, we know
how important it is that a voice like his is saved...
Please email me..
Thank you
Sharmeen

Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy
www.sharmeenobaidfilms.com

______


[3]

Dawn
April 23, 2007

INDIA NEEDS A NEW ALTAR OF REASON, NOT MORE RELIGION

by Jawed Naqvi

EMERGING from an inter-faith conclave in Delhi on Saturday, a former 
foreign minister and a former cricket captain, both from Pakistan, 
looked disturbed. 'It is bad enough that we are fighting one category 
of mullahs in our country. But to nurture nine different kinds of 
obscurantists in the name of communal harmony must be a bigger 
nightmare,' said one.

My instinct is the reference was to the Muslim clergy's counterparts 
in other religions that straddle South Asia. The Buddhist and 
Christian zealots of Sri Lanka's majority Sinhalese community, for 
example, who preach hatred of Tamils. And Tamils of the island 
nation, both Hindu and Christian, who see the Sinhalese as their 
enemy. Core Hindus of Nepal, generously helped by India's RSS, 
deified their authoritarian king ' before he was deposed by his own 
less trusting subjects ' as an incarnation of Lord Vishnu. The 
Nepalese currency notes still bear the salutation to the government 
of 'Sri Paanch', a reference to the deity the king embodied.

The dishonour inflicted on minority Hindus as also on Muslim women by 
mullahs in Bangladesh has been extensively documented by rebel writer 
Taslima Nasrin. But a more institutionalised form of religious and 
ethnic discrimination bordering on slavery seems to have existed in 
Pakistan for decades. According to a report in the Dawn last month, 
the Supreme Court directed the Sindh police to ensure the recovery of 
a nine-member peasant family of Munnu Bheel by April 14. Bheels are 
predominantly Hindu peasants who lived in the once dense forests of 
northern India. This particular family has been missing since 1998.

According to the Dawn report, the Bheel family was abducted by an 
influential Muslim landlord some nine years ago. The landlord was 
arrested and jailed on the intervention of the apex court. At the 
last hearing, the Sindh police chief had conceded that the 
centuries-old decadent culture of bonded labour in the region was 
behind the disappearance.

It was in 1996 that Munnu Bheel's family members and 71 other Hindu 
peasants slaving on the land of Abdul Rehman Marri were rescued by a 
task force of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. But on 
February 4, 1998, nine family members were again kidnapped apparently 
by the same landlord after the family refused to pay back a loan owed 
to the feudal lord. Bonded labour is rampant in India too, but it 
exists along the more entrenched caste contours, which though an 
aspect of religion has a dynamic of its own. In South Asia, caste 
should be part of any fair discussion on religion but that wasn't the 
case at the conclave in Delhi.

There used to be a quaint phrase to describe a platform of religious 
preachers like the one addressed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh 
last week. 'Unity in obscurantism' ' that's what we called it. And 
obscurantism, as we all know, works in tandem with the dominant 
feudal culture of the region. At the same time, this bizarre unity of 
obscurantism's practitioners in South Asia has another seamy side to 
it.

If you read the chilling testimony of Maulana Maudoodi from Justice 
Munir's inquiry into the anti-Qadiani riots of 1950s, and compare it 
with the hatred vented by Hindutva's Guru Golwalkar in1939 against 
Indian Muslims in the book 'We, Our Nationhood Defined' you wouldn't 
find any difference in the level of zealotry. Worse, as the case of 
Munnu Bheel exemplifies, Maulana Maudoodi's prescription of treating 
non-Muslims as second class citizens is still merrily practised in 
Pakistan despite recent measures, like the court's intervention, to 
stem the rot.

As Prime Minister Singh addressed the religious conclave in familiar 
clich's last week, he emphasised the need to observe and practise 
communal harmony, as opposed to merely tolerating the other's 
religion. He quoted Swami Vivekananda's widely parroted lines ' 'As 
the different streams having their sources in different places all 
mingle their water in the sea, sources in different tendencies, 
various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee.' 
This, however, has never worked out quite the same way in practice.
On the contrary, religion and its concomitant communalism has become 
an essential feature of India's mainstream politics.

In fact, even as Dr Singh was addressing the South Asian inter-faith 
conclave, the country's election commission was hearing a petition to 
punish the main opposition party for spewing hatred against Muslims 
in the Uttar Pradesh election campaign currently under way. Some 
would see this as a sign of a healthy democracy in which even a 
powerful and influential party such as the BJP could be put out of 
the electoral fray if found guilty of electoral malpractice, which 
spreading communal hatred is. In reality though the idea is 
far-fetched. The horrible events of Gujarat, for example, are a case 
in point, where terrorised Muslims are subjected to an ongoing social 
boycott and daily abuse by the BJP. That's proof enough that 
religious fascism cannot be fought by pious ideas alone. If the 
election commission couldn't dislodge the BJP in Gujarat, it is 
hardly likely to provide any relief to India's secular idealists in 
the case of Uttar Pradesh.

And if it does ban the BJP by a quirk of luck, does Dr Singh have the 
stomach to thwart the backlash that would follow? Most likely not.

Under the circumstances what can the Indian prime minister do? For 
starters, since secularism is not a mere absence of communalism, he 
can begin by practising a more palpable secularism in his own 
backyard. It is a shame that while India can boast of a Sikh prime 
minister and even a Sikh army chief ' unthinkable in the aftermath of 
the 1984 violence against the community ' a bureaucratic subterfuge 
prevents the country from hiring a Sikh bodyguard to protect the Sikh 
prime minister. This is ridiculous and this is what Dr Manmohan Singh 
should be addressing, instead of mouthing shibboleths on secularism 
and communalism.

Do we need news agencies to remind us that there are scarcely any 
Muslims working in India's 10,000-strong external intelligence 
agency, and neither Muslims nor Sikhs working as bodyguards for the 
country's top leaders? The Outlook magazine reported in November last 
year that mainly Hindu but officially secular India has its first 
Sikh prime minister but his community is not trusted enough to guard 
him?

Further, the magazine claimed that India's minority Muslims were not 
trusted by the security apparatus because of fears they could 
sympathise with the country's mainly Muslim neighbour and long-time 
foe Pakistan. Is this true? Dr Singh has to answer.

Secularism is not sermon or a slogan to embellish some conclave of 
obscurantist representatives or to win a few brownie points in a 
public debate. If India has to demonstrate a healthy distance between 
religion and politics, which is what secularism really is all about, 
the state has to provide the beacon light, and not some ragtag 
alliance of clergymen. We'll wait for Dr Singh to demonstrate his 
commitment to secularism by blowing the whistle on the 
communally-motivated bureaucrats who have kept Sikh and Muslim 
bodyguards from joining his detail.

As for Pakistan, it can do its bit by producing Munnu Bheel's family 
and ensuring their safety against future abuse of their religion and 
ethnicity. The Supreme Court's deadline of April 14 has already 
passed.

______


[4]

Deccan Herald
April 21, 2007

Media & Rights
MEDIA ATTACKS REEK OF COMPLICITY BY THE STATE
by Teesta Setalvad
The long arm of the law failed to enforce the rule of law when 
mediapersons were attacked.


Since the nineties, politically vocal outfits - many of whose 
fraternal organisations contest elections and are not debarred from 
the race for the ballot - have been fomenting hatred through hate 
speech and violent action. They have deliberately been targeting the 
media, threatening individual mediapersons and their organisations, 
threatening their lives and destroying properties.

In each and many of these cases, some of these enumerated below, the 
response of the State has been not to punish the guilty. The long arm 
of the law has failed in enforcing the rule of law when mediapersons 
have been attacked. No prosecutions have been launched and the guilty 
not punished. The Indian judiciary, both the 'lower' and 'higher' 
have not seen it fit to intervene and ensure that actions are taken 
on these blatant attackers of free speech and Indian democracy.

In short, the State, by not investigating and prosecuting the 
criminals has become complicit in each and all these media attacks.

April 16 2007. The attack on the Mumbai office of Star News is the 
subject matter of discussion after a supposedly unknown outfit 
attacked the news channel, destroyed property after it had telecast 
the story of a minor Hindu girl marrying a Muslim boy from Surat. (It 
would be worth an independent investigation whether the perpetrators 
of the crime had a previous record in communal crimes but then the 
police especially, are unduly reticent in investigating or releasing 
such information.)

January 20-21, 2007. Kumar Ketkar, editor, Loksatta, was brutally 
attacked by a group proudly claiming to be the Shiv Sena and Bajrang 
Dal outside a meeting held by the Brahmin Maha Adhiveshan in Parbhani 
as he distinctly spoke against the discrimination of the caste 
system. Not only did the police take a long while to reach the spot 
but the deputy chief minister and home minister in the Maharashtra 
Assembly called this brutal attack on a senior journalist's life 
"just a bit of chaos." This was after a question was raised in the 
Assembly. This amounts to not simply abusing the privilege of the 
legislature but actually conveying untruths, akin to a witness 
committing perjury before a court. Whether Mr R R Patil should 
himself be investigated by the state police for not merely 
trivialising an incident but in effect letting the culprits of a 
murderous attack go scot-free should be a matter of serious 
consideration.

Year 2006. Two journalists were murdered while doing their job in 
Assam and neighbouring states.

Prahlad Goala, working on a regional daily in Assam, was killed after 
writing articles exposing nepotism on the part of a local official. 
Also, in the North-east, a bureau chief escaped a murder attempt by 
an armed communist group. What has happened to the police 
investigations and prosecutions of these crimes?

A young correspondent for a regional newspaper in Maharashtra, Arun 
Narayan Dekate, was stoned to death by gangsters he had named in his 
articles. Have the guilty been punished?

April 2006. The journalist and camerapersons of CNN IBN were severely 
roughed up and their OB van damaged in Lucknow after they had done a 
story on BSP chief Mayawati's assets, and a week earlier, on the 
corrupt links of two Samajwadi Party ministers. The police failed 
miserably as just one person was arrested and released within two 
days. Crime yes, punishment, no.

May 2006. A correspondent and cameraperson of IBN 7 were roughed up 
badly in Vadodara as they covered the illegal demolition of a dargah 
that showed local politicians enjoying the destruction. Was an FIR 
lodged by the commisionerate in Vadodara?

Was an investigation completed? Criminals arrested? The entire team 
of NDTV led by Rajdeep Sardesai was attacked in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, 
on March 1, 2002. The car was smashed, driver beaten and camera 
damaged. Needless to ask Modiji's Gujarat whether any action was 
taken. Senior television journalist Barkha Dutt and Dibhang were also 
attacked in Gujarat during the coverage of the post-mass carnage 
elections of 2002.

Kashmir: June 2006. Shujaat Bukhari, correspondent in Kashmir for the 
national daily The Hindu, escaped a murder attempt by armed men. 
Indian security services have also been implicated in attacks against 
the press, as in the assault, in September, on three reporters, who 
were beaten by police officers in the streets of Srinagar.

Elsewhere, Abdul Rouf, of the Srinagar News, and his wife Zeenat 
Rouf, were arrested in November in disturbing circumstances. 
Photojournalist Muhammad Maqbool Khokar has been held since September 
2004 under an emergency public security law. Despite calls for his 
release from the justice system and the National Human Rights 
Commission, the police have refused to let him go.

India cannot claim the superstardom of having arrived in the 
globalised world with its pathetic record on human rights in general 
and the attacks on the freedom of the press in particular.

The statement of condemnation by The Editors' Guild of India over the 
attack on Star News, is welcome. But media organisations need to 
assert their rights vis-a-vis the Indian state before hard-earned 
freedoms are snatched away from under our nose.

Caution: Journalists, especially some television channels have 
committed serious ethical blunders and for these they too must face 
the law.

A national channel organising a panchayat sitting over a Muslim 
girl's personal life, is one instance.

Another is the very serious ethical blunder, in August 2006, when 
journalists on local stations in Bihar purchased petrol and matches 
for a desperate man so that he could commit suicide on camera.

(The writer is co-editor 'Communalism Combat'.)

______


[5] 

Times of India
23 Apr, 2007

DON'T ALIENATE MUSLIMS
by Ratna Kapur

Recently a German judge declined the request of a Muslim woman to 
secure a divorce from her husband, on the grounds that the Qur'an 
sanctions the beating of women. In Britain, head teachers have been 
given the authority to ban Muslim girls from wearing the niqab on 
several grounds, including security.

In India, the BJP continues its assault on the integrity of the 
Muslim community, accusing Muslim men of posing as Hindus, marrying 
Hindu women and later declaring their Muslim identity in its latest 
communal CD. And all of these virulent attacks on Muslims are taking 
place in democratic countries that preach inclusion, diversity, 
freedom of religion, and of course, free speech.

Islam is a culture that is now frequently essentialised and pitted 
against universal norms and values such as freedom or liberty. And 
because it is cast as existing outside of these norms, as a threat, 
it is not entitled to the same standard of human rights and civility 
as the 'rest of us'.

The Gujarat pogroms were an example of such a response, where the 
sangh parivar justified the actions of the rioters as an expression 
of 'Hindu' anger against years of appeasement of the Muslim 
minorities and an act in defence of the honour of Hindu women and the 
nation.

Muslims remain mocked and humiliated by the propaganda of the Hindu 
right, and the Election Commission is correct in recognising the 
egregiousness of their latest communal CD. But the actions of the EC 
still leave the broader issue unaddressed. Muslims are under siege 
here and elsewhere in the world.

And the liberal democratic process has far from enabling and 
promoting their rights, achieved precisely the opposite. The Hindu 
right has cleverly used the tools of democracy and fundamental rights 
to cast the Muslims as opposed to democracy and violators of basic 
rights.

Muslims are invited to surrender their 'special' rights that violate 
India's commitment to secularism, and become a part of the 
mainstream. Should they refuse, they are cast as disloyal and threats 
to the security of the democratic state and the Hindu national polity.

This project of assimilation is pursued in and through the discourse 
of rights rather than in opposition to such rights. This strategy is 
not specific to the Hindu right, but used by conservative and 
mainstream movements in many liberal democracies.

  But forcing the Muslims to choose bet-ween performing a cultural 
strip and becoming 'just like us', ignores the historic disadvantage 
to which this community has been and continues to be subjected. The 
Sachar committee has recognised the blatant extent to which the 
Muslims have been 'lagging behind'.

It has made several recommendations recognising that equality is not 
achieved merely by treating everybody the same and ignoring 
difference. If equality is to be achieved in result, then it is 
necessary at times to accommodate difference, as a rule and not an 
exception.

If Muslims and other sectors of the population are increasingly 
alienated by the very demo-cratic process that is intended to include 
them, through an interpretation of rights based on majoritarian 
norms, where will they go? The cornerstone of any democratic state 
lies in the protection of the rights of minorities.

One of the recommendations of the Sachar committee is the 
establishment of an equal opportunities commission to examine the 
grievances of disadvantaged communities. A second is the 
establishment of a diversity index based on incentives to encourage 
greater diversity in educational institutions and emp-loyment. These 
initiatives would benefit Muslims, as well as others such as women, 
girls, and OBCs, encouraging integration without the coerciveness of 
assimilation.

India is home to one of the world's largest Muslim populations. It 
thus remains incumbent on us to demonstrate effective ways to 
integrate the religious minority community and not perpetuate the 
global divide being reinforced by democratic countries throughout the 
world along the lines of religion.

Focusing on forceful evictions of Bangladeshi Muslims in the name of 
the 'war on terror', or permitting vituperative CDs in the name of 
protecting the right to free speech will do little to integrate 
Muslims. If we fail to promote the rights of these minorities, we 
will sow the seeds and encourage the production of the very terrorism 
we are seeking to resolve.

The writer is with the Centre for Feminist Legal Research.



______


[6]

(Outlook
April 30, 2007 Issue)

Bhopal
Civil Code, De Facto
HINDU-MUSLIM MARRIAGES GIVE SAFFRONITES IN MP AN EXCUSE FOR 
'RIGHTEOUS' UPHEAVAL

by Saba Naqvi Bhaumik

Bhopal's Hour Of Marital Crisis

* The city came close to a riot last fortnight over a Muslim boy 
marrying a Sindhi-Hindu girl.
* The Bajrang Dal has formed a Hindu Kanya Suraksha Committee.
* The Sindhi panchayat wanted their girls to stop using mobiles or 
riding two-wheelers and to abandon the city's fashion of covering 
their heads and faces Islamic style.
* The state CID keeps tabs on all Hindu-Muslim marriages.
* According to one list distributed by the Bajrang Dal, 341 such 
marriages have taken place between 1997-2004.
* Families of Muslim boys who run away with Hindu girls are harassed 
by the police.
* The Muslim community has responded to the latest uproar with a 
dignified silence.

***
Are Hindu-Muslim marriages made in heaven too? Perhaps, but if you 
happen to be in Bhopal, capital city of Madhya Pradesh, that 
saccharine-sweet cliche is swiftly turned sour by a vicious form of 
saffron vigilantism. Hindutva's brigadiers unleash mayhem on the 
streets each time such a marriage takes place, the state cid keeps a 
list of such couples, and the parivar's propaganda machine spews 
uninterrupted venom about predatory Muslim men luring innocent Hindu 
maidens.

Over the last one month, the state home department has recorded six 
inter-religious marriages in Madhya Pradesh, three each in Indore and 
Bhopal. But while the Indore marriages provoked no stir, Bhopal came 
close to a riot on April 14 over the issue. Of the three Bhopal 
couples, one Neetu and Rehan quietly returned to their respective 
homes after they were tracked down. Since they claimed they had got 
married already, their families are now believed to be thrashing out 
the details. One couple is yet to be traced.

It is, however, the elopement of Priyanka Wadhwani, a girl from a 
wealthy Sindhi family, and Umar, also from a leading Muslim family in 
Bhopal, that triggered the biggest storm in the city. Incensed, the 
Sindhi community convened a panchayat. Much deliberation later, the 
elders concluded that it was mobile phones and two-wheelers that were 
leading their daughters astray and perhaps a curb was required on 
these. A "distinctly Islamic" influence was also discerned in the 
practice of Bhopal girls covering their heads while riding. "They say 
they do it to protect themselves from heat and dust," said Madhu 
Chandwani, general secretary of the Sindhi panchayat. "But it's 
clearly a fashion picked up from some Muslim girls. We Sindhis left 
Pakistan to protect our daughters, and here in India they are moving 
around with their heads covered."

The girls, however, did not take kindly to the panchayat's diktat and 
took out a procession. Sindhis in Indore too expressed reservations. 
Confronted with all the opposition, the panchayat backtracked and 
said these were just views and not a firman on the community.

As for Priyanka and Umar, they are in hiding in Mumbai and are said 
to have contacted activist Teesta Setalvad. Umar's family thinks it 
would be foolish for them to return as Umar could be attacked or even 
thrown into jail in bjp-ruled Madhya Pradesh. Never mind if the court 
has ordered that the couple be given protection.

Priyanka and Umar's troubles have been compounded by the fact that 
Priyanka's family has close links with the parivar. Outlook met her 
uncle Lajpat Rai Wadhwani in the company of known parivar activist 
Bhagwandas Sabnani, who is also said to be a close aide of Uma 
Bharati. Uncle Wadhwani was categorical that "Priyanka is dead for 
us". More vocal was Sabnani who was not only instrumental in 
organising the panchayat but was also behind the creation of the 
Hindu Kanya Suraksha Samiti, another parivar front organisation that 
will largely be run by the Bajrang Dal.

Love doesn't enter into the picture for Sabnani; it's all part of a 
larger conspiracy to convert Hindus to Islam. He outlines the 
diabolical design Muslim boys perpetrate: wear tilaks to disguise 
themselves as Hindus and hang around girls colleges; threaten and 
force the girl to run away with them and then abandon them since they 
can marry many times.

Bhopal girls cover their heads against the dust, but for Sindhis it's Islamic

That both Umar and Rehan have converted to Hinduism is not enough to 
wash their sins. "It's meaningless," says Sabnani. "Done under 
pressure." With the families of both boys under attack in Bhopal, the 
Hindu conversion could indeed have been a tactical move. For Sabnani, 
there is no doubt: "In no time, they will reconvert." The most 
sensible thing for the couple to have done was to marry under the 
Special Marriages Act, but it's a long bureaucratic process that 
requires a month's notice during which anyone can object to the 
proposed marriage.

Incidentally, of Umar's eight brothers, the eldest too is married to 
a Hindu, Aparajita Sharma, daughter of a police DG and an IAS officer 
herself. Reports in the media said the second daughter-in-law too was 
a Hindu but she is in fact Muslim, and goes by the name of Zeba. The 
rest of the brothers are unmarried. When Umar disappeared with 
Priyanka, it was Zeba's husband and Umar's brother who was picked up 
by the police and questioned repeatedly for five days.

All their connections and wealth can't stop Umar's family from 
feeling nervous, enough for them to refuse being photographed or be 
directly quoted. They say people who tried to help them were asked to 
lay off by the highest authorities in the state. The police would 
land up at their house at odd hours and without warrants. Umar's 
conversion is hardly an issue for them. As a family member says, "He 
is a 22-year-old child. We are worried only about his security and 
health." Currently the family has round-the-clock police protection.

Hardly surprising, as many think that the state government would have 
allowed a riot had the regime in Delhi been friendly. But as Sajid 
Ali, a senior lawyer and Congressman, says, "We recently complained 
to the minority commission in Delhi how there have been 112 incidents 
of communal tension since the BJP came to power." Ultimately, the BJP 
dispensation decided to back off and told its Bajrang Dal/VHP cadres 
not to agitate further. Even the devout doubted the intentions of the 
agitators. The general secretary of the All India Sindhi Sadhu Samaj, 
Mahant Baba Ramdas Udaseen, told Outlook: "Social outrage is not 
surprising in such cases. But these days such issues are also 
highlighted for the political agenda of dividing communities."

And no one did it better than the parivar outfits in Bhopal. They 
made political capital out of the state's practice of tabulating such 
marriages, something it has no business doing. The Bajrang Dal went 
to town distributing an 'official' list of 341 Hindu-Muslim marriages 
in Bhopal between 1997 and 2004. Hardly an alarming figure but enough 
to reinforce parivar lore of venal Muslim characters pursuing 
innocent Hindu damsels. Some years ago, VHP leader Acharya Giriraj 
Kishore had gone on record to tell this correspondent: "There is a 
physical reason Muslims can seduce Hindu girls. They give them more 
sharirik anand (physical pleasure) because they have a surgery, 
Hindus don't." In Kishore's view, circumcision is the Muslim's secret 
weapon. In the face of such seductive logic, can reason have a chance?

By Saba Naqvi Bhaumik and K.S. Shaini in Bhopal

______


[7] 

UK

The Guardian
April 11, 2007

INTEGRATION - OR SEGREGATION?

The latest report on faith schools tries to play down their divisive effect.
by Terry Sanderson

The enquiry set up by Communities minister Ruth Kelly aimed at 
finding ways to challenge "barriers to integration and cohesion" has 
published an interim report, that can only be described as 
contradictory and counterproductive.

The Commission on Integration and Cohesion's report [ 
www.integrationandcohesion.org.uk/Interim_Statement.aspx ] suggests 
that "faith schools" play no part in segregation while at the same 
time admitting that school is probably the best way to break down 
barriers between communities.

The report dismisses those who oppose faith schools on the grounds 
that they are divisive as being "obsessed", and accuses them of using 
religious schools as a "red herring". Yet, at the same time, an 
opinion poll commissioned to go with the report concludes that "going 
to school or college together emerged as the top way of encouraging 
interaction". It cites as evidence 47% of people "identifying using 
shared education resources as a motivation towards mixing together".

The report notes that the poll results also suggest that "improving 
the value of these everyday education and employment interactions 
would have a significant result on cohesion".

Then, on the following page it complains:

     Some people have told us that they see faith schools as a 
significant barrier to integration and cohesion. Others, especially 
from faith communities have said faith schools are vital to helping 
their young people develop as strong and confident British citizens. 
Our initial thinking is to put faith schools in the same category as 
residential segregation, almost as a "red herring" in the debate - 
there is no problem as long as there is social interaction outside 
the faith school ...

But the report's poll identified that there is a major problem. As 
few as 42% of respondents had mixed with people from other ethnic 
groups in the past year. The report says:

     Given what we understand so far about the need for interactions 
to be meaningful in order to promote integration and cohesion, it is 
worrying that more sustained encounters are not being developed. But 
our work has uncovered positive signs about the sorts of areas that 
might help us influence interactions in our four key areas: schools, 
workplaces, neighbourhoods and arts/cultural.

Can anyone make head or tail of this? To identify school as the best 
place to break down barriers and then announce that those who oppose 
separation of children on the grounds of religion are throwing in a 
red herring is illogical. It is clear that the authors of this report 
are listening only to those they want to hear. They say that the 
"faith communities" have told them that faith schools are a good 
idea. Of course they have. "Faith schools" are the last hope of 
survival for "faith communities".

This enquiry will achieve nothing - indeed, will make things worse if 
it is to continue to be conducted in this blinkered way. If it 
uncovers evidence and then dismisses it because it doesn't fit in 
with the government's policy of promoting faith schools, then it is 
downright dangerous.

The government must listen to those who are telling it that the 
proliferation of faith schools is a threat for the future. A recent 
report 
[www.lsbu.ac.uk/families/publications/SCDiversityEdu28.8.06.pdf] from 
Professor Irene Bruegel of the South Bank University was emphatic 
that the government's idea of "twinning" faith schools achieved 
precisely the opposite of what was intended. It simply increases the 
sense of "us" and "them" that "faith schools" engender. Sending 
children on occasional visits to other schools simply increased 
tension and suspicion between them.

Crucially, Professor Bruegel's research showed that children from 
different ethnic groups and religions must mix on a daily basis in 
primary schools in order for ethnically diverse friendships to 
flourish into adult life, and indeed for the parents of school 
children to become better integrated. This is what the cohesion 
report should have recommended. Sadly, it has been hijacked by 
religious protagonists both inside and outside government who are 
more interested in fostering faith than in solving the very real 
problems that religiously - and increasingly, ethnically - segregated 
schools will create. Its real purpose is to open the door for the 
most disastrously counter-productive government policy on cohesion 
imaginable: a massive increase in minority faith schools.

Let's hope that by the time the government publishes the final 
version of the report, in June, it will have changed its tune.


_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Buzz for secularism, on the dangers of fundamentalism(s), on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit
citizens wire service run since 1998 by South
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DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not
necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers.